Who's your historical hero?

Thomas Jefferson
Karl Marx

 

Trudeau

 

Bach, the dude was a machine

 

martin luther king jr.

 

Napoléon Bonaparte.

Julius Caesar.
Vercingetorix.
Baldassare Cossa.

 

Emperor Frederick II

Arminius

JFK

Mohandas Gandhi

Spartacus

Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub

 

I have two:

Robert E. Lee
and
Gustavus Adolphus

 

Mine would be John Colter
He was a mountain man who was with Lewis and Clark and the discoverer
Of Yellowstone allso known as Colters Hell. This was a time in history of great adventure and discovery. I wish I could have been there.

 

Lincoln

 

Bill Wilson, one of the cofounders of Alcoholics Anonymous.

 

Carl Jung
Alexander the Great

 

Thomas Jefferson wrote most of one of the most significant political documents in world history at a relatively young age, and had what it took to further channel his sharp intellect into action and become the 3rd President of the United States. He demonstrated complete mastery of politics, philosophy, science, architecture, European culture, and world history. And he did it all with quiet confidence, respect for others, sophisticated taste, and an original sense of style.

Though he did live in an era that is entirely different from modern times, his distinctive and impressive personal qualities come through quite clearly. He may have been our first "hip" president.

 

josephine baker!

 

Jesus, Louis XIV (until he messed up France with his antics and wars), and Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

 

NotDeadYet:
Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. According to Wikipedia,

Jefferson was an outspoken abolitionist, but he owned many slaves over his lifetime. Although these facts seem baffling, biographers point out that Jefferson was deeply in debt and had encumbered his slaves by notes and mortgages; he could not free them until he was free of debt, which never happened.
​

Still, it was slaves serving food to his table, and not him serving food to a black man's table, not him hoeing crops out in the field. So all the rest about all men being equal was just so many words on paper. It didn't cut it where the rubber meets the road.

 

Mad Jack Churchill (Looking past the fact he wanted the war to go on for another 10 years so he could continue fighting)

William Gladstone. I know that he ultimatly didn't do much for Ireland- but that wasn't his fault. He was the first British PM to truly care about Ireland. He's also a big figure here in Liverpool

Winston Churchill. He might have been a bigot, he might have ordered the use of chemical weapons on the Kurds, he might have been an alcoholic, he might have ordered the Royal Navy on the dock strikers here in Liverpool, but what a fucking guy. He was exactly what we needed here in Britain, and simply put he got us through the war.

Emily Davison. She may have died in a rather silly way, and her actions arguably actually put back the suffragette movement, but she was willing to give her life for the womens vote and thats got to count for something

William Wilberforce. Led the anti-slavery movement here in Britain making slavery a criminal offense in 1807 and outlawing it completely in 1833

 

Upton Sinclair,John Steinbeck,Walter Reuther,Da Vinci,among others.

 

Leonardo Da Vinci, was the greatest man who ever lived, it is widely believed. So him for a start.

But then there's Shakespeare, for cater for my Literary side- and John Peel for his incredible input into British music.

 

Plato

 

So were most of his contemporaries, regardless of their political and social views. I don't think it is possible for people of our generation to fully understand that contradiction, so common in that period. To some extent, we are all products of our times.

Leonardo da Vinci is also high on my list, but I assume that he had at least a few opinions and positions that I would not agree with, simply because of the era in which he lived. That does not diminish him as a man.